Memo to RNC Delegates: You Didn't Build It, But Feel Free to Pay Up

“We built this” is the phrase ringing throughout the (largely publicly funded) Tampa Bay Times Forum this week at the Republican National Convention. Though it is meant as a rebuttal to President Obama’s remarks earlier this summer emphasizing that government is the dynamic foundation and support system upon which all Americans rely, its use as a theme of the RNC is actually a critical illustration of the president’s point. To be clear, Obama was saying that “there are some things (like fighting fires or building infrastructure) that we (the government and its people) do better together,” such as constructing a multi-million dollar professional sports facility in downtown Tampa or, say, rebuilding the infrastructure and restoring public services to an entire city in the wake of a (relatively small) hurricane to the tune of millions of dollars. But if the 50,000-plus people visiting Tampa for the RNC this week really want to take credit for these enormous feats of collectively funded and supported work, we have helped them figure out just how big a check they’ll need to write.

As Media Matters pointed out last week, the Tampa Bay Times Forum was built in 1996 by the Tampa Bay Sports Authority, a public entity. Of the $139 million construction cost, 62 percent, or $84 million, was paid with public money – bonds backed by the City of Tampa and Hillsborough County, paid back through sales taxes, tourist development taxes, and ticket surcharges. More recently, the Republican National Committee, which received over $18 million from the federally supported Presidential Election Campaign Fund, shared costs of over $500,000 with the Tampa Bay Lightning just to upgrade the arena’s sound system.

Additional preparation for the RNC cost the City of Tampa upwards of $2.7 million in beautification projects and infrastructure upgrades, like improving highways, redesigning signage, planting palm trees, and bringing a locally loved fountain back into use. Commuting from up to 90 miles away, RNC delegates will surely find these upgrades to be pleasant as they are introduced to the hallowed Tampa tradition of long, grinding commutes. Some delegates may even be transported around by a fleet of 400 city-chartered buses. Those same delegates who, like Florida Governor Rick Scott, are adamant about blocking any further government expenditures on mass transit are more than welcome to walk to the Forum (although a 2007 survey of cities found that Tampa has no walkable destinations, and 50 percent of the urban core is set aside for parking).

Downtown Tampa offers delegates benefits that come as a result of public investment in the city’s urban core (unless, of course, they choose to avert their eyes out of principled opposition to wasteful government spending on things like public art and higher education). The Riverwalk, a two-mile green space along the Hillsborough River, has already enticed the Tampa Museum of Art to relocate and freed up space for public events. The city received $11 million from the Obama administration to put the finishing touches on the project, and is spending $3 million to turn downtown’s Zack Street into a pedestrian thoroughfare with benches, landscaping, and street art. Finally, along the downtown riverfront, the University of South Florida’s new Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation is the world’s largest medical facility that allows medical students to practice surgery without a patient. The center was built at a cost of $38 million and was partially paid for by Build America Bonds, an Obama administration program that provides capital for infrastructure projects and issued over $100 billion in bonds in its first year of operation. More wasteful government spending!

Of course, no event in Florida in August would be possible without hurricane season preparation. In anticipation of Tropical Storm Isaac’s imminent development into a hurricane, the RNC cancelled Monday’s convention activities. Though it’s not clear yet what cleanup the storm will require, similar strength storms generally cost FEMA millions in statewide recovery. When Tropical Storm Debby hit Florida earlier this summer, FEMA spent over $15 million on individual assistance.

For the 2,286 RNC delegates eager to claim they “built this” – whether it’s the Tampa Bay area infrastructure or social services, Tropical Storm recovery included, provided by the host town – we’ve done some math to help them determine just how much money they would have to personally shell out to validate such a claim. Diffusing a $15 million cleanup cost among 2,286 delegates would lead to a total of about $6,562 per delegate—a small price to pay to make sure the party can actually nominate a candidate for president. If we ask everyone visiting Tampa for the convention to pitch in—roughly 50,000 people, according to the RNC website (and yes, 15,000 members of the press, that includes you too)—each person would pay $300 to help clean up. Natural disasters aren’t cheap. Without coordinated government efforts to manage and clean them up, they would be even less so. To cover the roughly $100 million in Tampa Bay area beautification and service and infrastructure improvements, including the construction and upgrades of the Tampa Bay Times Forum, each delegate would need to pitch in an extra $43,745, or an extra $2,000 per visitor, and that doesn’t include myriad other costs going into this week’s events, including the nearly $50 million federal grant covering RNC security.

With this $15 million tucked away and set aside for hurricane cleanup and over $100 million secured for RNC-related infrastructure and beautification, Tampa and Florida taxpayers could go back to taking care of day-to-day expenses, like improving Medicare coverage in a city and state where the need for it is acute. Florida’s health care costs are well above the national average—it ranks 18th in per-capita health spending overall—but the state rockets to second place nationwide in Medicare spending with $11,893 spent per enrollee. The state also ranks second behind California in gross Medicare spending, with just over $39 million spent on the program. And while the Tampa and St. Petersburg hospital referral regions do not contain Florida’s highest per-enrollee Medicare expenditures, nor are the cities among Florida’s most elderly, the city’s age 50-64 population grew by 40 percent between 2000 and 2010. A city whose largest-growing age group is on the cusp of Medicare eligibility is hosting the convention of a party that has dedicated itself to ending the program as we know it.

There’s a larger-than-usual chance that your average Republican delegate will be a Medicare recipient, too. While the convention does not officially release information on the age of its delegates, several states do. North Carolina, Texas, and Connecticut, for example, are all sending delegations whose median age is 57 or 58. Any delegates who require medical care during the convention, hurricane or no, will have the option of visiting Tampa General Hospital, a downtown hospital affiliated with the public University of South Florida—but not, alas, with the for-profit hospital chain managed by Florida Governor Rick Scott in the 1990s and later found guilty of Medicare fraud. Tampa General is the city’s largest hospital, with an operating revenue of $1.1 billion in fiscal year 2011—a year before it was voted the best hospital in Florida by U.S. News and World Report. No doubt at least one Republican delegate, for some reason or another, will find a reason to visit the hospital and help contribute to this nonprofit, government-funded success story.

As for the delegates who stay healthy, we hope you’ll enjoy your stay and that your cheers of “we built this!” are worth the $50,307 you’ll have to refund the government for all the work it did to prepare the city on your behalf. And remember to set a little extra aside for tourist activities!

Jordan Fraade is a former member of the Roosevelt Institute | Campus Network.